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The lawyer started surfing the channels searching for something that would shut his mind off. He was angry. The lawyer couldn’t bear to watch the news any longer. “Hey! I was watching that!” said the younger man in the bed next to him. The young man glared at the lawyer. “Look,” said the lawyer, “they’re going to say that the Russian government is involved. That’s all. I have seen the same segment 3 times already.”

The lawyer thought back to when he was in school, how the news was only watched from 6 or 10 in the evening. Something changed, and now he watches it any time there is a tv around.

“What’s more important than the news?” demanded the young man. The lawyer cycled back to CNN and put down the remote. He didn’t have the emotional capacity to fight about the television. He had been angry for too long.

The nurse entered the room to check the lawyer’s blood pressure. “You need to relax,” she said. “You’re too tense.” She took the remote control and turned on the television to the Disney Channel. “No news.” The young man in the other bed glared at her, and pulled out his phone to read the news. “Hey, can you check my I.V.?” asked the young man. “I think it’s loose.”

The lawyer tuned out. His mind shifted to another time.Less than a century ago, the nurse would have been wearing a white uniform, but today, nurses wear comfortable scrubs that may be any color. The scrubs consist of a tunic and pants. The lawyer thought about how the combination seemed more sanitary and less authoritarian than the older uniforms.

Within minutes he felt himself slipping out of consciousness. He was so tired. “Was it the anger from the news? Was it from my I.V.?” The lawyer was back in the hospital room, but it was a different era. There was a cathode ray television that probably weighed 50 pounds. It was tuned to a movie about a ghost named Vigo the Carpathian, and his pink ooze. He looked out the window. Outside looked like Moscow.

The lawyer saw there was no I.V. on him. He stood up, and walked out of the room. He was in the woods. In the distance he saw a black dog. He walked to it, but as he got closer, he realized it was a goat. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of fear like he was falling. The lawyer woke up out of breath. It was night time. He was too awake to fall back asleep. The young man next to him was on his phone still. The lawyer decided to turn on the television.